Brightwork newmusic: "Lost and Found, again…"
Sara Andon, flute
Aron Kallay, piano
Nick Terry, percussion
Brian Walsh, clarinet
with guest artists
Margaret Edmondson, cello
Sarah Thornblade, violin
Sunday, February 24, 2019, 7 p.m.
Drinkward Recital Hall
Members of Brightwork newmusic and guest artists; from left to right, Sara Andon, Aron Kallay, Nick Terry, Brian Walsh, Sarah Thornblade, and Margaret Edmondson. Photo courtesy of Brightwork newmusic.
PROGRAM
Night Refuge* (Sextet) – with fixed media and video
Bill Alves
Cooking School* (Sextet)
Jonathon Grasse
Lost and Found** (Sextet)
Molly Joyce
INTERMISSION
Murmurations (Clarinet + Piano)
A.J. McCaffrey
Parallel Divergence (Pierrot)
Takuma Itoh
A-Gain** (Sextet)
Liviu Marinescu
Scale 9
Sean Friar
*World premiere
**World premiere of new arrangement
**World premiere of new arrangement
In Lost and Found, again…, Brightwork newmusic explores what it means to be lost over and over again, only to be found, albeit for a fleeting moment. Bill Alves’ Night Refuge features the processed sounds of modern refugee camps along with images of refugees fleeing a military invasion from the 1932 film A Farewell to Arms. In Jonathon Grasse’s Cooking School, a tragicomedic tableaux depicting the perils and successes at an Edward Gorey-esque school for culinar arts plays out as various disjointed identities—playful, macabre, serious, recreational—pop in and out of existence. Molly Joyce makes being found the point of her playful Lost and Found, here reworked for Brightwork’s instrumentation. The cellist begins the work lost, and it is the other instruments that help her find herself. A.J. McCaffrey’s Murmurations depicts an enormous flock of birds forming a massive, constantly shifting cloud that seems like one solid but ever-changing shape in the sky, each individual lost in the crowd. In Takuma Itoh’s driving Parallel Divergence, it is the pianist who never stops playing as the other instruments struggle to keep up, occasionally diverging from the main force of the piano to create independent lines of their own. Liviu Marinescu’s A-Gain illustrates the impact of repetition on musical form as various motives, phrases, and sometimes entire sections are “found” over and over again, creating a sense of déjà vu. Scale 9 is the scale used to measure hypomania in a manual widely used to by psychologists. Sean Friar captures many of the hallmarks of a manic episode in this dynamic piece; especially distraction by irrelevant stimuli, flights of ideas, elevated mood, and accelerated and occasionally out-of-control motor activity. In the end, it all flits away into the aether, lost again…
Brightwork newmusic is a classical new music sextet based in Los Angeles. Brightwork consists of piano, violin, cello, flute, clarinet, percussion (“Pierrot +”), and champions the best of the music that is being written today, while continuing to play the classics of “new” music from the last hundred years.
Flutist Sara Andon is an international soloist and recording artist known for her ravishing tone and deeply engaging interpretations. She has performed in major music festivals and venues including the Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, as well as in the Hollywood studios and in contemporary music series, such as Green Umbrella, Ojai Music Festival, New Music New Haven, Hear Now, and People Inside Electronics. She has performed composer Steven Stucky’s Double Flute Concerto with flutist Ransom Wilson and recorded with artists ranging from Placido Domingo to Daft Punk, Billy Childs, and YoYo Ma. Recent film scores include It (2017 film) and Star Trek: Discovery.
Pianist Aron Kallay has performed internationally and is a fixture on the LA new music scene. He is the co-founder and board president of People Inside Electronics, a concert series dedicated to classical electroacoustic music, the managing director of MicroFest, LA’s annual festival of microtonal music, and the co-director of the underground new-music concert series Tuesdays@MONK Space. He is also the co-director of MicroFest Records and has recorded on MicroFest, Cold Blue, Delos, and Populist records. In addition to his solo work and work with Brightwork newmusic, Aron performs with the Varied Trio and the Ray-Kallay Duo.
Nick Terry is a percussionist specializing in contemporary classical chamber music. He has cofounded Ensemble XII, an international percussion orchestra which Pierre Boulez endorsed as “…representing the next generation in the evolution of modern percussion.” He is also the founder of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet and a founding member of a local ensemble PARTCH, in addition to Brightwork newmusic. He is a five-year alumnus of the Lucerne Festival Academy, where he worked extensively alongside members of Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, and Fritz Hauser.
Clarinetist Brian Walsh is interested in sound and communication, regardless of the genre, and frequently performs with diverse groups as Inauthentica, The New Century Players, The Industrial Jazz Group, PLOTZ!, The Doug McDonald Brass and Woodwind Coalition, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble. Walsh also leads Walsh Set Trio, a jazz ensemble focusing on the performance of his own compositions. He has premiered pieces by Luigi Nono, Girard Grisey, James Newton, Rosalie Hirs and more and collaborated with Peter Maxwell Davies, Gavin Bryars, Bobby Bradford, James Newton, Muhal Richard Abrams, and the Henry Mancini Orchestra among many others.
Cellist Margaret Edmondson has been a member of the Long Beach Symphony since 1994 and served as Artistic Director of their Sounds & Spaces chamber music series. She plays regularly with the LA Opera Orchestra, Music Center Dance, LA Master Chorale, and Sierra Summer Festival. She has also worked with the LA Chamber Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra to name a few. She was a co-founder of Renaissance Arts Academy, winner of the LA Music Center Bravo Award in 2010 for the string program she created and nurtured from 2003-2011 and which continues to serve many young string players.
Violinist Sarah Thornblade is the associate principal second of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She is also a member of the Eclipse Quartet, an ensemble dedicated to performing 20th century and contemporary music, and a former founding member of the Arianna String Quartet, which has been a grand prize winner at the Fischoff National, Coleman and Carmel chamber music competitions. She has performed with Camerata Pacifica, Jacaranda Music and Auros Group for New Music and has collaborated with artists such as Gilbert Kalish, Jeffery Kahane, Andres Cardenes, Randall Hodgkinson and Warren Jones. Sarah is currently on the faculty of Pomona College.
HMC is deeply grateful for the generous support that created The Ken Stevens ’61 Founding Class Concert Series.